Farmhouse Home illustrations

Just before Christmas I was commissioned to create some illustrations for Catherine Bedson's Farmhouse Home blog, which is a blog essentially celebrating food. Catherine cooks delicious food and shares rustic, country style recipes, as well as doing reviews of local cafes in Melbourne and book reviews.

Catherine was looking to re-vamp her blog and wanted some hand-drawn illustrations to accompany the new design. The illustrations were to form the actual header and overall branding, as well as individual icons for the menu tabs.  The illustrations had to reflect the easy country style of her food, but also something that would capture the homely and personal feel of the blog.   

We made the decision early on to purely create the illustrations in black and white, and in a sketchy hand-drawn style.  The image above, and the following images below show some of the sketches and work in progress to get to the final illustrations. 

 

All of the illustrations were completed using a HB and B pencil, onto plain paper.  The sketchy style of the illustrations was used to convey a relaxed and homely feel, and the monochromatic colour palette helped to keep it simple but contemporary. 

One of my favourite parts of the brief was to sketch Catherine's dog Charlie - who was very cute! 

Over on the Farmhouse Home blog currently is a little interview Catherine did with me about my artistic background, and I also shared one of my favourite recipes.  Yum!  You can see it here.